Argentina supports the initiative to cancel the debt of the poorest countries



Argentina's economy minister Martín Guzmán expressed his support on Thursday for the initiative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to forgive the debt of the poorest countries in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the Ministry reported.

"The crisis affects countries unevenly. Argentina faces important restrictions, without access to credit. We welcome the initiative of the IMF and the World Bank to forgive debt to the poorest countries," said the minister during the Plenary Meeting. of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the IMF, in which he participated today by videoconference.

Guzmán defended that the suspension of debt payments be made "so that these funds can be redirected to combat the pandemic and attack the economic effects of sanitary measures," according to the Economy statement.

"We are going through a crisis of enormous magnitude, the most severe since the Great Depression of 1930," added the minister, who thanked the IMF "for preserving the debt resolution issue on its work agenda."

He also asked "to bear in mind that debt sustainability will be critical to the economic recovery of the affected countries," so "efforts in this regard must be comprehensive and include the private sector."

"The crisis is borderless and spreads as fast as COVID-19. We have to learn from each other. We need flexibility to adapt as the crisis evolves," he concluded.

The Government of Argentina is in a process of dialogue with private creditors with a view to a debt restructuring, the completion of which has been delayed by the global financial tension unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Government will announce this afternoon the offer that it will present to creditors to restructure $ 83 billion of debt contracted under foreign law, with which it wants to reach an agreement and prevent the country, which has been in recession for two years, from falling out of Payments.

It is also in formal negotiations for the payment of the debt that the country maintains with the IMF, for some 44,000 million dollars, which correspond to the loan granted to Argentina in 2018, during the Government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), when A recession broke out that is still continuing.

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